Stormwater Taxing District Plan OK'd

County commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to set up the first-ever taxing district to deal with stormwater pollution and flooding in unincorporated Polk County.

By TOM PALMERTHE LEDGER

BARTOW | County commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to set up the first-ever taxing district to deal with stormwater pollution and flooding in unincorporated Polk County.Commissioners will decide how much to levy within the 10-cent cap during budget hearings Sept. 5 and Sept. 12.Polk County commissioners have been discussing some kind of funding to deal with pollution and flooding issues for 25 years, but delayed action to avoid political repercussions.Commissioners took the action to deal with the need to comply with new, tougher state and federal water pollution regulations."I feel conflicted on this," Commissioner John Hall said, explaining he ran on a no-new-taxes platform, but said he would be willing to go with it if it includes the promised offset in garbage fees."This is just to allow us to consider (a tax) in a couple of months,'' he said."It's a lot easier to campaign than to govern," Commissioner George Lindsey said."We're doing as minimal as we can; it is the prudent and responsible thing to do," he said.Tuesday's hearing didn't attract much comment, but the during the morning's public comment period a number of people, many of them Tea Party/912 members, spoke in opposition to the proposal, arguing against any tax increases.Dan Frodge of Alturas wanted some assurance that anything the county did would actually improve water quality.Del Lawson urged commissioners to defy environmental regulators and impose no taxes.More than a quarter of Polk County's rivers and creeks and nearly half of Polk's lakes do not meet current water quality standards. There may be others that don't meet them, but there is not enough data available yet to determine that.The main pollutants, most of them caused by stormwater runoff, are nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous or bacteria.The proposal involves a property tax instead of the fee based on the size of roofs, driveways and parking lots that commissioners rejected last year following intense public criticism.Commissioners propose levying a tax of up to 10 cents per $1,000 of taxable value. It will apply only in unincorporated areas of Polk County. Most Polk cities already have their own stormwater assessments.The proposed rate would mean that a person with a home appraised at $100,000 with a $50,000 homestead exemption would pay $5 a year. Last year's proposal would have charged most homeowners $54 a year. The newest proposal will raise about $1.4 million. Last year's proposal, which would have funded the entire county stormwater program, would have raised $9.6 million a year. The proposed stormwater tax will be coupled with a plan to reduce residential garbage assessments so that homeowners, who made up the bulk of the critics of last year's proposal, will not be faced with an additional tax burden.

[ Tom Palmer can be reached at tom.palmer@theledger.com or 863-802-7535. Read more views on the environment at http://environment.blogs.theledger.com and more views on county government at http://county.blogs.theledger.com/. Follow on Twitter @LedgerTom. ]